A Week of Speeches

01 April 2015

For Key Stage Two (KS2), Literacy week meant dedicated speech-writing for every pupil. It has been one of the highlights of the year so far, because every student was united in a common goal, to write the best speech possible.

Visiting authors gave helpful input on the Monday morning, which students took on board and began feverishly practising and perfecting their writing. The hallways, classrooms, playgrounds and even the swimming pool were all venues for practice, trial and error.

The Primary School was lucky to have help from a number of secondary pupils who, on each day of the week, treated KS2 to some first-class examples of how to speak in public. By the end of the week, children were spontaneously sitting themselves down in neat rows on the playground, even before the bell had been rung, in order to get a ‘front row seat’.

For some light relief Mr. Jon Crew and Mr. Dougal Fletcher gave hilarious versions of famous Shakespeare speeches. Renditions of Macbeth,Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar were all incredibly entertaining.

After a whole week of practice, 12 finalists were chosen to give their speeches as part of ‘The KS2 Speech Competition’. Principal Mr. Iain Blaikie and Head of Primary Ms. Nonie Adams were part of a six-strong judging panel, just to make it even more nerve-wracking.

There were many themes; ‘Why Broccoli Would Make a Good Friend’, ‘Is Your Goldfish a Great White Shark’ and ‘Let Children Drive Cars’, were just a few of the topics chosen. The speeches were given confidently, with conviction and great expression. Best of all, was that they were all of an extremely high standard.

Despite the high quality of all 12 speeches, a winner had to be chosen and on this occasion, it was Bryant from Year 3. His speech entitled ‘Beautiful Canada’ was masterful. He did his teacher, parents and Regents International School Pattaya proud.

The Literacy ‘speech-week’ was such a resounding success that we intend to instate it as an annual tradition in the Primary School. Many thanks must go to all the teachers, parents and students for devoting their time and energies to this event.